How is it we celebrate Christmas – decorate trees, go power shopping, write letters to a fat man in a red suit, drink eggnog, smooze at company cocktail parties, etc. – and celebrate the birth of Jesus on the same day? Talk about poor planning. Who has time to celebrate both?
One of my favorite bloggers, nAncy, brought this up in a recent blog post and it got me thinking.
Every year we hear some variant of the campaign: Keep the Christ in Christmas. And, although the original intent of Christmas was to celebrate the birth of Jesus, and some traditionalists still do, Christmas has kind of . . . evolved, to put it nicely.
To be honest, I love the secular side of Christmas, too. That song about grandma getting ran over by a reindeer, still makes me laugh. And, I dance to Boogie-Woogie Santa Claus, sometimes with a glass of Eggnog in my hand . . . when my more pious Christian brothers and sisters are not watching. The Bible says we shouldn’t antagonize them.
Still, the reason I celebrate Christmas is to celebrate the birth of our Savior. It is not that I shouldn’t work to put Christ back into Christmas, which is so important. But, even more important, I need to put Christ back into my everyday life the other eleven months of the year.
If I am really good all year long, Santa will bring me a gift . . . cool. But with Jesus, when I believe, even if I mess up here and there, I get the gift of eternal life . . . better.
I’d trade out Santa for Jesus any day.
